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21-year-old steals CSPD car before crashing it

21-year-old Dustin Guinn apparently has a talent most people do not — escaping from handcuffs behind his back — and last night around 7:45 p.m. he proved it. According to the Colorado Springs Police Department blotter (see record no. 20106), Guinn was originally contacted by CSPD in the area of Nevada Avenue and Brookside Street. After police found felony and misdemeanor warrants for his arrest, he was handcuffed, placed in the backseat of a patrol car that was still running to allow the air conditioning to remain on, and seat-belted.

Guinn then somehow got out of his cuffs, broke through a partition between the back and the front, and stole the police car, before crashing it seven minutes later into a house near Bonforte Park. The Gazettereports that the homeowners were watching Waterworld at the time, while their son was outside ready to leave but ended up "bodyslamm[ing]" Guinn instead.

It's all something police spokeswoman Lt. Catherine Buckley is at a loss to explain the "how" of.

"That's a good question," she says in a phone interview. "I mean, they're handcuffed behind them, he was seat-belted in; and that's kind of what we're looking at is trying to figure out if he'll talk to us and let us know how he did it. That always helps for us. But it's hard to say."

Buckley declined to release the name of the officer, because "it's just one of those things where it wasn't the officer. He followed procedures, everything was done correctly, so ..."

The vehicle in question is one of the older ones on the force, meaning it does not have a proximity key fob that may have prevented the theft. And while there is a small slide in the plexiglass partition between the front and the back, Buckley says the slide was closed before it was broken open.

"In my 26 years of being a cop in this state, this is the second time, that I can point to, that we've had a car stolen," Buckley says. "The officer was actually standing there with a sergeant. They jumped into the sergeant's vehicle and they started to go after the individual. They lost sight of him for a little bit, so they actually flooded the area with officers, and officers spotted him. They were starting to close in and he ended up hitting a tree and a fence.

"We have to walk that fine balance between maintaining a comfortable environment for this arrestee — it was an extremely hot day yesterday — and that overall safety factor, you know?" says Buckley.

Aside from his arrest warrants, Guinn was charged with motor-vehicle theft.